


Seven for a Secret

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: West Wing
Genre: Angst, Community: partnersbaby, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-03
Updated: 2007-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-08 14:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between them there were: fourteen months of silence, two years of absence, one novel, nine short stories, and a resignation that no one had been able to explain. Future-fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven for a Secret

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for the 2007 Toby/Sam fest at LJ comm partnersbaby. For the prompt: _"And on the days that followed, I listened to his words, I strained to understand him, I chased his thoughts like birds." - 'Secret Journey', The Police_
> 
> Warning: this assumes that both Presidents Santos and Bartlet lied about a (different) significant issue. Or at the very least that the characters believe they did.

_Beep._

_"…Toby, it's Josh. Sam… Sam quit today. I don't know where he's going, but I hope it's you, cause he sure as hell won't come to me. If he… look, just tell me if you find him, okay?"_

_Click._

* * *

**One for sorrow**

_People and places were easy things to leave, as long as you could leave parts of yourself with them, along the way. The new self didn't care.  
\- "And we all fall down" – Sam Seaborn_

The bag was too heavy, and it banged his knee when he hauled it onto his shoulder. The cab driver looked at Toby, who had asked him to drive to this house in the middle of nowhere that the GPS could barely find. Toby bundled notes into the guy's hand, and waited for him to leave before knocking the door. He didn't want to be able to be turned away.

Sam opened the door.

Toby had expected – foolish hope – that Sam would not be surprised to see him standing there. It had been long enough that he was counting years, not months, but still, he had hoped. There were relationships, though only one Toby had ever been involved in, where turning up unannounced after long absence was acceptable.

Sam's hand rested on the top of the door. He obviously hadn't been expecting company, not with the faded jeans and washed out tee shirt. Sam frowned. "Toby. Is everything alright?"

Thrown, he searched for an answer. "Everything's fine. Why?"

Sam laughed in disbelief, and gestured behind Toby.

Toby looked around. The sunlight was coming bright through the trees, and it was utterly still. All he could hear were the birds, with the little road he had followed up here too far away, and quiet anyway.

"Your house is in the middle of a forest," Toby said.

"Yes."

"Deliberately."

"Well, the trees were here first, if that's what you mean."

"Then the house, and then you."

Sam nodded slowly, still bemused. He looked down at Toby's bag. "You're staying?"

"Unless you're going to call me a cab?"

Sam turned his back, and let Toby follow him into the house.

It was darker than Sam normally kept a place. The small windows and the shade from the trees probably contributed, but Toby shivered. There was a pool of light in the centre of the room, over the large table. Sam turned the other lights on.

Toby smiled at last, seeing the way the room was divided. The near side of the room, with the big table, was covered in files and legal textbooks. The bookcase at that wall was all heavy books with titles like _'Global World: the Internet and Copyright Law'_. But once he walked past those, into the room, Toby could see the writing desk at the far wall. The shelves alongside it were sagging with uneven piles of slender fiction.

Sam interrupted Toby reading the titles. "The spare room's upstairs to the right. I'll get you some blankets."

Toby took the cue and carried his bag upstairs to the room Sam had indicated. There was a pile of unpacked boxes in the corner, and the room didn't seem much used. Clean and prepared for visitors though, and Toby had almost forgotten that Sam had other friends than them. That just because CJ and Josh and Donna had not seen him, it did not mean that he was entirely a hermit. Then, the little house in the woods hardly helped the image.

When he came downstairs, Sam was sitting at the table, waiting for him. Between them there were: fourteen months of silence, two years of absence, one novel, nine short stories, and a resignation that no one had been able to explain.

Toby sat down and threw about for a topic – there were hundreds but none seemed safe now. He settled on, "I liked your book."

Sam laughed, almost. "No you didn't."

"I'm sorry?"

"Don't tell me you liked my book. If you're saying that, either you didn't read it or you're lying to me. And I'd rather not think that of you."

"Sam."

"Toby."

"Don't do that. I read the book, Sam, of course I did. You wrote it, so I read it."

"It's a kids book."

"I have kids. And it's not a kids book, Sam, you know that." The book should have been the least of the things they could not speak about. It was the one common language they still possessed – rhythm and cadence, and how to make words beautiful even when they were not in the President's mouth. But the book and why it failed was tied together with all the reasons Sam left and spoke to no one. Sam's silent anger made the easy things hard, and Toby should not be surprised by that. He had always relied – had still hoped – that Sam would smile at him and take his arm, saying his name like a better hello. But they had travelled far from each other since those days. Toby did not know the way back, could not remember turning away from Sam and starting walking. But the space between them was more than the distance across the table, and so they sat in silence, and waited.

* * * *

 

**Two for joy**

_The rain hurt her skin. It was a good hurt, she decided, with nothing to compare it to. It reminded her where she was, and where she wasn't. She laughed, and tipped her head up to swallow the water.  
\- "And we all fall down" – Sam Seaborn_

Sam had always been too energetic in the mornings. Long before Toby had been thinking of getting up, he heard the vigorous rattle of Sam's typing downstairs. He pulled on a t-shirt and tried to walk quietly into the living room.

The sun had barely started to rise, and Sam's face was lit more by the computer monitor than the cool sunlight.

"Inspired?" Toby asked.

Sam didn't appear to be startled, and he didn't turn away from the computer when he asked politely, "Another word for curious, please?"

"Enquiring. Inquisitive."

"No. Curiouser and curiouser, curious."

"Don't use curious that way. People are curious."

"I'm not going to. That's why I asked for another word."

"Strange. Peculiar. Bizarre. Unusual. Puzzling."

Sam nodded at the last, and changed the word onscreen. He yawned.

"Did you sleep at all?" Toby asked, to the dark circles under Sam's eyes, and the lazy motion of his limbs uncurling themselves out of the chair. Sam canted his head a little, though Toby couldn't work out if it was meant to be a nod or another question.

"I wanted to write," Sam said.

"Okay."

"And I have to go to work."

"Okay."

"You'll be alright on your own in the house?"

Toby nodded. He had forgotten that Sam still had a job – the Sam that existed in his head was the one who had spent the dawn-light turning a blank screen into prose. When Sam came down the stairs after his shower, hair still damp at the back, it was a different Sam. Not the suit and the tie, because after all Toby had seen him dressed that way more often than not. Not even the briefcase, but the detached expression Sam wore when he walked out of the front door.

It was at least eight hours before Sam would be back. Toby was used to filling his time, and though it was the wrong house, he did as he would have done, and fetched the papers from his bag. Grading had become something relaxing; it was an easy way to perfect the world, striking out one ill-employed argument at a time. Occasionally it even worked, he thought, awarding an A with a little reluctance.

He finished the first set of papers before lunch, and found himself at Sam's bookcase again. Sam's taste in novels was eclectic, and the collection of luridly coloured fantasy was clearly something Toby was going to have to mock him for later. Some part of him just knew that Sam was handed Lord of the Rings as a child because of the shared name. Actually, that might explain a lot about Sam's worldview.

They were alphabetical, and Toby didn't quite mean to, but he ended up kneeling on the floor to find S. The spine of Sam's debut novel didn't stand out from the rest. It was coloured a muted blue, with Sam's name in white print. "Sam Seaborn", rather than the S.N. Seaborn he used for his short stories. The cover showed an angel, and Toby knew that the publisher had told the artist to make the figure look friendly. But Toby had read the book, no matter what Sam thought, and he saw the winged girl plummeting to earth.

In the kitchen, the coffee-maker clicked. Toby tucked the book under his arm and wandered in the direction of the caffeine.

Coffee safely in one hand, and book in the other, he settled down on Sam's couch, and began to read. Without the initial shock, and the wonder at the _bile_ Sam had been spitting at Josh back when he wrote it, Toby still liked the book. But it was profoundly lonely, bitter where Sam had once been sweet, and even if it had been none of those things, the Christian Right would still have hated it.

It was meant to be a children's book, and Sam apparently believed it so, but Toby did not think a child – an ordinary child – was in the position to understand it. He closed it for a moment, hand marking his place, and held it over his heart. Eyes closed, he could feel the relief, and the desperation, Sam must have felt when he wrote the opening. An angel leaping from heaven and crashing to earth. Once upon a time (it seemed the appropriate expression) he could have laughed at Sam so blatantly recreating himself as a fictional force of good. Back when Sam was the token atheist on staff, but wielded the word 'wrong' like a flaming sword.

Huck and Molly would get to read this someday soon, and Toby thought they would enjoy it. The story, at its heart, is still Sam. Is still warm, and loving, and full of belief in the importance of ordinary goodness. The problem is that it finds none of that goodness where it should be in abundance. And the main character is alone throughout the book. Others drift in and out, but it is still a solitary journey – a coming of age story without romance or friendship.

He had read the finale hundreds of times already, searching for the meaning. This time, it felt tantalisingly close. Sam had quit just after the Midterms, and the book was published the next summer. He would have been writing this section when the frost was just starting to melt, and before any of them had managed to track him down.

Sam opened the door. "Toby?" he called. His voice dropped nearly to a whisper when he saw Toby lying on the couch. "Toby."

"How was your day?"

Sam laughed, nearly a giggle - such a surprised burst of amusement. "Uh. Okay? Long. I brought takeout."

"For me?"

"No, Toby, I figured I'd just sit in front of you eating until you stab with me with my own…" He broke off, looking down at the book sitting on Toby's lap. Seven inches by five of mulched _tree_ had killed any hope of casual conversation.

"I thought you said you'd read it," Sam said.

"Sam."

Sam walked away from him, into the kitchen, and Toby could hear him rattling the plates out of the cupboard.

"Sam. I've read the book probably twenty times."

The sounds in the kitchen halted abruptly.

Toby talked to the brief cessation of hostilities, to the hope that with the right words he could unlock Sam, and Sam and the book, and Sam and the book and the flight to Oregon. "I'm not known for being uncritical, Sam. If I didn't like it, I would tell you. It's… it's good, Sam. But it was never going to sell."

Sam came to the living room with plates and cutlery and two beers. "I know," he said.

And Toby wanted to ask, wanted to press the issue, _tell me what you meant here_. Sam was never hard to read before, and he wanted to ask when that had changed. The ending of the book is the key. But instead he lifted the fork Sam had brought him, and stabbed a piece of spicy pork. "Your day?"

"Well. One of my clients wants to sue Steve Jobs for copyright infringement. Apparently the plans for the iPhone were stolen."

"Okay."

"It gets better. It seems that Mr Jobs, while not owning the rights to the iPhone, does have contact with extra-terrestrial lifeforms who gifted him technology which allows him to invade the brains of others."

"Please tell me this is one of your pro bono clients."

"In fact, yes."

"Good. I'd hate to think your time was being wasted."

Sam laughed, and slid Toby the noodles with a sly smile. They ate, and the moment to go back to the serious conversation passed. Silence over a meal was nothing especially unusual between the two of them, even with so much that needed to be said. Toby had never been one of those people who held back more with those he loved, but right then, for Sam, he left old wounds alone.

The combination of beer and food and warmth meant he was nearly falling asleep before they cleared up. For politeness sake, he dragged himself up to clear the plates away, and to help Sam wash up. Afterwards Toby lay back against the arm of the couch, and watched Sam type. His fingers flew across the keys, and that part had not changed; Sam writes as quickly as he thinks. Toby turned his face into the cushion and closed his eyes. He counted to forty before Sam walked quietly to his side, and pulled the book from his fingers. Sam covered him with the blanket, and went back to the computer. Toby had woken that morning to the sound of Sam's keyboard, and that was how he fell asleep: to the familiar sound of Sam drawing words from the air.

* * * *

 

**Three for a girl**

_Lies hold the world together. Without them there's only us, and after all, we're nothing special anymore.  
\- "Pure and Simple" - S.N. Seaborn_

Sam's television was in his kitchen, mounted to the wall facing the table. It reminded Toby uncomfortably of his own apartment, but where his felt empty without the twins, Sam looked as though Toby's presence was an intrusion. He pulled the two chairs more evenly around the table, so neither faced the flashing screen.

He smiled over his shoulder at Toby, slow and only half there. Sam poured them each a glass of red wine, and passed Toby's across before peering at the saucepan in concern.

"Sam?"

"It's fine. I think. I know how to cook, Toby."

"I'm sure you do."

"But you're going to hover anyway."

"Would you rather, perhaps, I left you alone?"

"Honestly?"

Toby ignored that, and settled down at the table, dragging the chair back to its original spot, facing the television. Santos was onscreen at the end of the report, looking harried. The report cut away to Aurelia Morales – a tiny dark-haired child of about ten, only a few years older than Molly. She flinched away from the camera flashes lighting up her way to grade school.

Toby looked at Sam. "Did you believe him?"

"No."

"Did you have any…"

"No reason. Just no."

"President Bartlet might have…" Toby stopped that trail when he saw the look on Sam's face. "_Leo_ would have."

"He isn't Leo. He's not President Bartlet either. And he lied, because if he didn't why wouldn't he have told-? No, Toby! He could have told us. Not the public, maybe, but he could have told us. And Josh was as surprised as anyone when it came out."

"So you quit over fraud in politics. Were you feeling particularly Capra-esque that day?"

"He lied."

"I seem to remember having this conversation a few years back. You stayed then."

Sam's eventual leaving had been prompted by nothing Toby had been able to discover at the time. But he knew why Sam had returned to the White House: because Josh had asked him. There was a certain dark satisfaction in knowing that even Josh Lyman's charms had not been enough to hold Sam in place that last time. That, however, did not answer the question of why Santos's lie had been worse than Bartlet's.

He looked at Sam, who was waiting for more words, though Toby felt it was the other man's turn to speak. Sam refused to make things easy.

"Why this time?" Toby asked.

"Because he hadn't earned it. He hadn't earned the right to lie to me."

"He's the President, Sam."

"Yes."

"Yes."

"He needed to be better."

"Sam."

"He needed to be _better_, Toby. He isn't a genius, and he's not a great man. The least he could be was a good one, and he lied. He's given the Republicans the election."

All those things were true, but they weren't the reason. Toby knew that, and it was the ammunition Sam had been trying not to give him. He didn't know what Sam thought he was going to do with it. At the end only CJ and the President had lasted out the full eight years, and Toby could not censure Sam for leaving any more than he could use him as an ally because of it. They had both had their reasons for doing what needed to be done. He just wanted Sam to admit what his had been.

"That's the easy answer, Sam. Give me the hard one."

"Toby."

"Don't hide behind the party. You ran away. You couldn't take it, and you ran out here to the middle of nowhere where you wouldn't have to think about it. You had a responsibility too."

"And what did you have? It was meant to be you and me and Josh. He hitched his wagon to Santos and you had already gone and I _tried_, Toby. But he wasn't worth it and where is it written down that I had to be the one that stayed?"

"You didn't."

"Excuse me?"

"You didn't stay. You ran – twice – and I still don't know what you were thinking!"

Sam was interrupted from whatever he would have said by the sound of the pan sizzling. He pulled it from the heat quickly and slid the contents onto the plate. "Help yourself. I'm not hungry." Sam left to go upstairs, dragging his laptop and its mess of cables with him.

The news report had shifted to the last debate; not one of the Republican candidates even seemed to be taking a Santos win seriously. The footage cut to President Santos, telling the story that Sam didn't believe. Toby turned the television off.

* * * *

 

**Four for a boy**

_Some people will deny nothing so quickly as that another is in love with them. Love holds the universal horror of making us both responsible for another's feelings, and vulnerable in our own.  
\- "Season of Light and Darkness" – S.N. Seaborn_

Molly wanted to know everything about Sam. Her mother had told her only that Daddy was visiting his friend, and so couldn't talk long. And Molly had all of Andrea's teasing curiosity; her voice down the line was a series of _and then what happened?_

Huck had been more interested in the house. "In the woods?" he had asked. "Like Hansel and Gretel?"

Toby had laughed to hear Sam drawn up as the wicked witch, and explained that the house was almost entirely inedible. "More like a ludicrously clichéd writer," he said.

"Like you, Daddy?"

"No, son, not like me. Sam's written a book. I'll read it to you in a year or so."

That was when Molly had stolen the phone, asking when Toby had got there and when he was coming home and if Sam was nice. If he and Daddy were best friends (except for Molly and Huck and Mommy) and if Sam would write her a story too. He could not help but think that Andy had dragged old photos from somewhere, because Molly had not been quite so interested in his friends before. "Did you share a room? Like Huck and me did when we were little."

You're still little, he thought wistfully, mentally measuring out the hand span of Molly's small paw in his. "Yeah, sweetheart, we did, sometimes."

"Can I talk to him?"

"Not right now, honey. Sam's busy. Maybe another time."

Sam walked past him, unseen from the stairs, and took the receiver gently from his grasp. "Hi, Molly."

And Toby watched, as Sam ran up his phone bill patiently answering every question Molly could think to ask him, and a few more. Then as he spoke to Huck, answering questions the boy hadn't worked up the courage to ask. _Yes I write a little. It's okay to think your Dad's better. Yes, he told me about you. He called me up right after you were born. I'm a lawyer the rest of the time – writing's fun but it doesn't pay all the bills. No, I think your Dad likes teaching. Well, that's not a great word to call his classes, but I still think he…_

Molly stole the phone back, to make her request for a book dedication. Toby watched the smile creep onto Sam's face and hover at his lips. "Sure."

"Sam. She'll remember," Toby warned.

"Not this next one, because it's a little old for you. But I'm writing a story for an anthology – do you know what that is? Good – and I would be honoured to make it for you, Molly."

He could hear the excited murmuring.

Sam answered, solemn voice, "Of course Huck gets one too." He passed the phone back to Toby. "They're going to the park. They want to say bye first."

Toby took the phone in one hand and grabbed Sam's arm with the other. Sam held still, though he was unhappy about it. The twins said goodbye three or four times each, spliced between cries of "Daddy, I forgot…". Andy snatched at the phone from the Maryland end of the line. "Tell Sam I said hi. I'll see you next week, Toby."

The dial tone was humming long and accusingly before Toby finally placed the receiver down and let go of Sam. He looked down, and rubbed the edge of his jacket, and when he raised his head, Sam had opened his mouth to speak. Toby caught his arm again; Sam didn't fight it; all of this had happened before. But Toby kept pulling until Sam's hip collided with his and they were flush against the wall, like a freeze-frame. He kissed Sam because he couldn't not.

Sam jolted backwards, raising one hand to his mouth as though Toby had punched him. "No."

"Sam."

"No."

"It's. Sam. I'm."

"I'm going out of town. That's what I came downstairs to tell you. Will's back home."

"Will."

Sam turned his face away, but then spun back around, eyes blazing. He held Toby's gaze and didn't speak, though Toby could see the words were boiling in his throat. This was where Sam should have been raising his voice, or punching the wall or punching Toby. But their important conversations had always been disguised as conversations about Bartlet or American Liberalism, syntax and metaphor and the rules of grammar. Without these pretexts, there was nowhere to go, and no basis for interpretation. There was only silence, and too many reasons for an absence of words.

"Sam," Toby tried, because even that one word could yield enough of an answer.

But Sam lifted his bag from the hallway, and walked out of the door. The slammed door and an engine revving were the only reply he was to receive.

* * * *

 

**Five for silver**

_In the sunlight they could be any two men, or none at all. They hold hands to be sure - in love in the sight of the whole world. In the moonlight, where they are visible only to each other, they are exactly themselves, and there is no need of touch.  
\- "Season of Light and Darkness" – S.N. Seaborn_

 

When he had thought of this before, the imagined touch had been light, the way Sam touched him on the shoulder or the arm. Now his own hand rubbed hard and fast, true to the Sam currently inhabiting his head, not the memory of then and there. This was wrong. The images blurred, the page turning too fast – Toby pulling Sam in, and Sam pulling away. His acquiescence and his harsh refusal. Toby didn't know which one was the fuel for this lunacy. He suspected, knowing himself better than he would like, that it was the second.

Sam had never been an easy target, but before this he would have been all soft refusal and apologetic smiles. It was better this way; Sam had gone and Toby was alone to lie on Sam's sheets and think about what it would be like to fuck him. It felt less like a violation now he knew Sam was angry enough about it to shove back. Sam had been sacred, because _they_ had been sacred, or perhaps it was the other way around. But now that Toby had desecrated the shrine and broken the idols, he could close his eyes and think of Sam's red mouth and blue eyes and if he would still be beautiful spread out flushed and sweating on the bed.

The hand which was still his, pretending at being Sam's, twisted cruelly, and Toby gasped and came all at once. There was a flash of a kiss and a punch and it didn't matter anyway which counted more. He slept, queasy and ill-satisfied, but with his control pulled back around him. Dreams of unfulfilled, ill-defined longing were nothing he was unable to deal with.

Something woke him. Toby opened his eyes, and wondered if it had been the moonlight, or the click of the door. Sam's return.

Downstairs, the house was still dark and cold, and the door lay open. He went to close it – reprimanding Sam in his head for shoddy workmanship and the tempting of criminals and madmen. In the trees outside, he heard laughter. "Sam?"

More laughter – an answer of a sort, if not worthy of an author like Sam.

"Here," Sam conceded eventually.

"Where?"

"You're not really very good at this."

Toby tracked the sound to the low branch of a tall tree, Sam perched upon it. "You're going to fall, and break your neck, and the ambulance will take a week to get here."

"Why are _you_ here?" Sam asked, sounding farther away than he could possibly be. A songbird, or an angel ascendant, not a man suddenly younger and happy again, kicking his heels against the tree.

"Here now or here ever or here alive and human at all? Because it's a little late for metaphysical examination."

"Here ever." Sam's voice drifted above Toby's head, addressed to the white stars. "I was trying to work it out."

"And?"

"I wasn't successful."

"There was a while there when I wouldn't have needed a reason."

"That was a long time ago."

"Not so long." Toby walked to the tree and leant against it, ignoring the flaking bark and the suspicion of insects. Sam's knees brushed his elbows, and his head grazed Sam's knee. He had lied before – it had been a long time since they stood this close.

Sam hummed a little, neither a response nor a song.

"Why did you leave?" Toby asked again, safe in the darkness.

"The last time?"

"Yeah."

"It was the right thing."

"Because of the kid? Sam, if we're talking about secrets…"

"No." Sam's voice was sharp, cutting through the still night and Toby's trailed off words. "It wasn't just that. That was part of it, but it wasn't just that."

"Was it…?"

"Toby." Sam had learnt finality in those missing years – how to turn what had been an entreaty into a closing argument. He sighed, a whisper noise louder than the forest's melody.

They waited there, caught in the middle of an almost-thaw.

A gust of wind burst through the clearing, scattering leaves. Sam laughed, more human this time, and shook the leaves from his shoulders onto Toby and the forest floor. He shuddered again involuntarily, only now reacting against the cold. "We should probably…"

"Yeah."

Toby turned around to offer Sam help down. Ignoring the proffered hand, Sam gripped Toby's shoulders and slipped off the branch. Toby's hands went to Sam's waist as if of their own accord, as if they were dancing. It was simply the next step to shake his coat off and drape it over Sam's goose fleshed arms. For Sam to turn easily out of Toby's grip and slide his hand to the small of Toby's back and steer him back to the house.

They said goodnight at the top of the stairs, Sam returning the jacket with an ironic bow.

"I was glad," Sam said, "that you stayed."

"I'm sorry?"

"I wasn't sure you'd still be here when I got back. I was glad."

"Okay."

"Yeah."

"I'll see you in the morning."

It was soft and momentary and utterly chaste, but Sam touched his arm before turning away. "Goodnight, Toby."

* * * *

 

**Six for gold**

_These roads could go anywhere. But it was just the two of them and the car again, so it had stopped mattering.  
\- "Any road will take you There" – Sam Seaborn_

When he woke up, the house was quiet again, and Toby began to suspect he might have dreamt Sam's homecoming. He heard the door, just like that half-awake moment the night before. This time it was closing, not opening, but Toby walked downstairs.

Sam's laptop was lying open on the table – a blue post-it stuck to the screen.

_Toby.  
Read this and tell me what you think.  
Sam._

He didn't recognise the document onscreen, and it took only a few moments to establish that he couldn't just start reading this. It was Sam's latest story, the one he had been working on in every spare moment before and after work since Toby arrived. Toby lifted the phone.

The answering machine picked up. "Sam Seaborn. I'm sorry, I can't take your call right now, but if you leave a message after the tone, I'll get back to you just as soon as I can… And yes, Toby, I meant it. Read."

When he looked more closely at the screen, he could see that it was marked as chapters three to ten. How Sam could write entirely out of order was beyond Toby, but he pulled the laptop down from the table and onto the couch. Coffee, a muffin, and he began to read.

Expectation was for the second to be like the first, and some part of him was braced for the remnants of Sam's anger. Last night had been the first hint that their before was only buried, not lost. But three paragraphs in, and Toby laughed. It was nothing like pilgrim detectives or _hey, we should write a book about this, you know. What it's really like._ But it was Sam: his gentleness and his compassions and the flashes of sarcasm that always made Toby grin behind his hand. It was a road-trip, and though Toby knew Sam had not left Oregon in months, it was a love-letter to the country they had crossed back and forth a hundred times over.

He distracted himself for a while trying to work out who these characters were meant to be. He saw both himself and Josh in one, before he realised that he had automatically cast Sam as the lead, and that he was wrong. He was right the first time round – it was about the journeys taken with those we love.

The first was beautiful, but this was something else. This one would sell, if Sam could make the rest fit the middle. Journeys must end and begin somewhere, and that could be the problem. Toby made a note to that effect, and sunk into the place where this could just be the next thing of Sam's that he needed to polish. He struck out extraneous adjectives and tightened up some of the verbs, but the text was already singing before he was finished. This one was going to be great.

Toby dialled the number again. "Sam." He stopped. "This is better. It's going to be…" He hung up, and waited.

Sam got back faster than he should have been able, if he had been waiting in the office. "Hey."

"Hey."

"Do you want to…?" Sam waved his car keys towards the door.

"Yeah."

They drove into town, picked up coffees to go, and just kept driving. Sam had the wheel, with Toby passing the polystyrene cup to him every so often along the road. Sam sputtered at the heat, and smiled at Toby in the mirror, and that was how it went until they were far enough away that they hadn't passed another vehicle for an hour. The road swept ahead of them, long and inviting, but Sam pulled into the lay-by.

The coffee was long past warm, and the sodas Sam had picked up weren't cold, so they sat on the hood and shared a bar of chocolate. "You liked it?" Sam asked, eventually.

"Yeah, I did."

"It was… it's been harder to write. I think before I was writing without even… but this time I couldn't."

"Yeah." The sun was starting to streak through the trees in its descent, painting colour over the browns and greens.

"Do you think it's better?" Sam asked.

"I think people are going to understand it more."

"That's not what I asked."

"I know."

"Toby."

"I." Toby collected his thoughts, ordered them into something that wouldn't send Sam running again. "I would rather believe that this one is you."

Sam hummed thoughtfully. He leant back onto the windscreen and Toby followed him down. The glass under his face was cold. Sam turned his head and said, "You're going back tomorrow."

"Yes."

"So we shouldn't…"

He didn't know what Sam was asking. The hood creaked when Sam stretched himself up and got down from the car. The road still stretched ahead of them, and it would be so much easier to keep going from here than to find their way back. But when Toby got back into the car, Sam swung the car into a U-turn and drove home.

Sam picked up the laptop and went to his bedroom to read Toby's notes. Toby waited in the spare bedroom, picking apart the remainder of his class's essays. The repetition was soothing, and it took his mind away from Sam in the next room. Before, it was always Sam who hovered, waiting. He had never used to care what Sam thought of what he wrote, or at least he had been able to pretend as much.

Sam came to the doorway, and looked in at him. "You're married."

"Divorced."

Sam waved his hand as though that barely mattered. Toby supposed that it didn't, not for this.

"You have two kids, and they live in Maryland. You have a job in New York. And I don't do this very often. It has to be…"

"Okay. Okay, Sam."

Sam laughed, rubbing his hands over the arch of his neck. "No, Toby, it's not." Toby shut his eyes, and felt Sam drop down beside him on the bed. He kept them shut when Sam leant in close enough that Toby could feel his breath, and settled his hand where the edge of his beard ran into his neck. Sam's thumbs pushed up at Toby's jaw until they would be staring at each other. "I had a good day," Sam said quietly.

"Yes."

"Is this going to be…?"

Toby opened his eyes, and nodded.

* * * *

 

**Seven for a secret never to be told**

_"What happens when we stop?"  
"I don't know. So let's not stop, okay?"  
\- "Any road will take you There" – Sam Seaborn_

Of all the times it had nearly happened, in the moments of feverish caffeinated imagination writing for the history books, it would not have been like this. It could have been sordid, or hackneyed: two people who worked together scratching an itch. (He did not think of it that way, though it had been one of the reasons why not.) But it would have been a one-time thing, just the same as this.

So Toby let Sam push him down onto the bed and lead, because Sam was the one setting the terms. Between them there were only two pairs of jeans and boxers, and two t-shirts. No slow unpeeling of shirts and jackets and ties; he had fantasised about Sam in monogrammed shirts and nothing else. Sam just shucked off his own black t-shirt, and slid his hands under Toby's to push it up his arms and over his head.

There was too little purchase on the soft sheets, and not enough friction between them. Sam twisted, trying to get his jeans off, and suddenly there was plenty of friction, and nothing else.

Sam's hands, which had barely touched him before this, skimmed down his chest and stomach and worked at the buttons of his fly. Jeans finally thrown down on the floor, Sam knelt over the top of him, legs spread apart over Toby's. He braced himself up with one hand, holding the tube in the other, liberated from one of his pockets.

It wasn't clumsy, or awkward, and that if nothing else was proof that they were only going to get one shot at this. It was not quite perfect, but close enough: the way Sam moved under Toby's hands like there were sparks wherever he touched, how his eyes went dark and hazy looking down at Toby before he pushed in. Toby wrapped his hands around Sam's wrists and watched his mouth shudder open, sighing Toby's name. Sam fell, half on top of him, and pulled a hand free to touch Toby. He didn't look down, burying his head against Toby's shoulder and kissing up to his collarbone. He took the shakes and shivers of Toby underneath him as a guide, repeating with his teeth and tongue the movement of his hands.

Toby woke, minutes or hours afterwards, with Sam looking at him.

"I know."

"You know what?"

"I know who told you about the shuttle."

"Sam."

"It wasn't David. Everyone thinks it was David or it was CJ and it wasn't. Why would you let them…?"

"David told me. CJ told me, for that matter."

"But not first."

"No."

"The President was first, Toby."

"Yes."

"And nobody knows."

"He does. Leo might have known. And me. Three people."

"Four."

"How did you…?"

"He told me. I don't think he meant to, but he's not well, and I visited, and I worked it out."

"When?"

"A week after midterms."

"A month before you resigned."

"Yes."

"Sam. Tell me it wasn't… Please tell me that wasn't…"

Sam shrugged, and lay down. Toby could see the alarm clock over Sam's shoulder – the red digits showing that he would have to get up in another hour, and head back to New York. He looked up at the ceiling, not at Sam, and said, "You wouldn't have gone to the papers."

"No." Sam turned onto his back and looked up at the dust motes flying above them. "Probably not. Was that why he fired you? Because he knew that if you wanted you could have…"

"He said some things. But I don't think he believed I was going to sell him out, no. It just made it worse. Made it personal."

"It's always personal."

It wasn't quite the answer he had been looking for, it was maybe the most unreasonable thing Sam had done in a long history of impractical behaviour. But he believed it – it settled into the gap between the Sam he had known and the Sam of now. And there was no anger in Sam's voice, where it had been burning only days ago. He could not take credit but at least he did not have to take the blame. This was not where Sam was meant to be, but he was happy here, and Toby had no room to question that. They had both taken the fallen parts of their lives and shaped them back into something they could get by with. It would have to be close enough. Sam's books were the only part of them that got fairytale endings, and even they have too much of reality buried within.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"The ending of the first one."

"Yeah?"

"You wrote it first, didn't you? Right after you left."

"Yeah. I needed to write where I wasn't, yet." Sam rolled towards him and kissed the inside of his arm before shutting his eyes. "I'll drive you to the airport tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

 

* * * *

_Beep._

_"Toby? I just wanted to let you know... "_

_Click._

**Author's Note:**

> Title and section titles from the rhyme, Sam's titles from [Oscar Wilde](http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/927.html), [Charles Dickens](http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/29595.html), [Lewis Carroll](http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/33008.html) or me.


End file.
